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W. G. HOSKINS AND THEVICTORIA COUNTY HISTORY

IN LEICESTERSHIREJohn Beckett

W. G. Hoskins returned to University College, Leicester in 1946, and almostimmediately threw himself into the task of reviving the Victoria CountyHistory in the county. He was appointed (honorary) county editor, and wasresponsible for setting up the required committees and for helping to raise thefunding. He also planned and drove forward what became volumes II–IV inthe Leicestershire ‘set’. Hoskins soon found himself at odds with the VCHoffice in the University of London’s Institute of Historical Research, and afterhe left Leicester for Oxford in 1952 some of the project momentum waslost. With work having resumed on the VCH in Leicestershire, this article setsout how the VCH has operated in the past, and what work has still to beundertaken.

The Victoria County History (VCH) was founded in 1899. Work started almostimmediately in many counties, including Leicestershire where the first volume inthe proposed county set was published in 1907. Work then stopped, as it didin many counties, as a result of the financial crisis which largely overwhelmed theVCH in 1908, and nothing further was done in Leicestershire until after theSecond World War. With the founding of the Department of English LocalHistory in 1948, W. G. Hoskins took up the VCH cause, and with funding fromthe county and city councils was able to drive forward volumes 2–4. After he leftfor Oxford in 1952, the baton was picked up by others, and eventually the firstvolume of topographical entries (Gartree Hundred) appeared in 1964. By then theenthusiasm, and the funding, had come to a halt, and the VCH in Leicestershireclosed down. The recent revival of work, largely driven forward by the SquireD’Lisle and Professor Christopher Dyer, has brought the VCH back into focus inLeicestershire, and this article provides the background against which the newinitiative needs to be set.1

The VCH was established in 1899, with an overall plan which envisagedLeicestershire being written in four volumes. This county ‘set’, to use the VCH’sown terminology, included two volumes of general essays about the history of thecounty, and two volumes of topography, in effect individual parish entriesconcentrating on manorial descents. Volume I for Leicestershire was published in1907. As with the first volume in most of the pre-First World War county sets, itincluded a substantial section on natural history. Much of this was written by

1 In the course of preparing this article I was able to call upon the help and advice of a number ofpeople who were involved with the VCH in its post-war incarnation, including J. M. (Michael) Lee,Janet Martin, Susan Reynolds, the late Christopher Elrington and Joan Thirsk. Michael Lee readand commented on an earlier version of the paper.

Trans. Leicestershire Archaeol. and Hist. Soc., 85 (2011)

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national experts who wrote for all, or many counties, among them RichardLydekker on palaeontology, B. B. Woodward on molluscs and T. B. B. Stebbingon crustaceans. Other essays in this section were written by local experts,including Montagu Browne, curator of Leicester Museum, who wrote on fishes,reptiles, birds and mammals.2

Natural history was followed by essays on Early Man, Romano-BritishLeicestershire, Anglo-Saxon remains and ancient earthworks. The introduction tothe Leicestershire Domesday, and the text itself, as well as the Leicestershiresurvey, was supplied by the young Frank Stenton under the supervision of J. H.Round, and the volume ended with an essay on ecclesiastical history. Under theoverall VCH plan this last essay would normally have been in volume II, but wasprobably included here because it was written and because the VCH was anxiousnot to waste any space.3

Work was also started towards volumes II–IV. Volume II in any county setnormally included general essays on ecclesiastical history accompanied byaccounts of religious houses, economic and social history, with separate entries onagriculture and industries, political history, education, sport and forestry. As withthe chapter on ecclesiastical history, the sections on religious houses wereprepared and written by Sister Elspeth of the Community of All Saints. SisterElspeth had an Oxford background, and wrote on a number of counties. She hadcompleted her work by 1908. Enid Routh wrote 25,000 words on the politicalhistory of Leicestershire, and John Harrison prepared material on agriculturewhich went into proof in 1908.4 Other sections were written on forestry (Dr J. C.Cox), industry (Miss Ethel Hewitt), mining (H. Butler John), bell founding (H. B.Walters) and sport (E. E. Dorling).5

Background work had been undertaken for volumes III and IV, as for allcounties, between 1904 and 1906 when a small army of recent graduates, many ofthem women, had been deployed to the Public Record Office and other nationalrepositories to blanket search the indexes and catalogues for documentaryreferences to individual places. Each reference was written on a slip of paper, andthe slips were then collated on a county by county basis for future use. InLeicestershire’s case this is as far as it went, and no manorial descents weredrafted.

In 1908 the VCH ran into the first of a number of financial crises, and workstopped more or less everywhere. When a new financial guarantee was establishedin 1910, it was for work in ten counties, which did not include Leicestershire.Some funds were made available to pay authors whose work was not published,but no further work in the county was undertaken until after the Second WorldWar.6 This was not unusual. Both Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire had two

2 VCH Archive, Institute of Historical Research, University of London (hereafter VCH), A11, WilliamPage to Montagu Browne, 21, 27 June 1906, 18 July 1907; Browne to Page, 26 June 1906.

3 VCH Leicestershire I (1907), xvii–xviii.4 VCH A11, correspondence of William Page with Enid Routh and John Harrison, 1905–7.5 ROLLR DE 3220, Editorial Board report, 31 Dec 1949; VCH, A. Taylor Milne to W. G. Hoskins,

15, 21 Feb, 18 March 1949; Hoskins to Milne, 27 Feb 1949.6 VCH A11, William Page to Enid Routh, 9 May 1910.

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general volumes published before the First World War, but no work ontopography was undertaken beyond collecting references on slips. The VCH wasin abeyance between 1915 and 1923, and thereafter it was mainly busy withpublishing volumes prepared before 1915. Rutland, which was due only twovolumes in the grand VCH scheme, had volume I in 1908 (which included all thegeneral essays for the county, including those which would normally haveappeared in volume II) and volume II in 1935, with sponsorship from Mr OwenHugh Smith of Langham, consisting of the complete topographical entries for thecounty.

This does not look like promising territory for Hoskins, but the position of theVCH had changed by 1947 in a way which made it seem more attractive to him asa project which could be attached to his new department. William Page, generaleditor 1904–34, gave the VCH to the University of London’s Institute ofHistorical Research in 1932, and at much the same time work was revived inOxfordshire. A single volume (II in the set) was published in 1907, but in 1932 ameeting convened by Sir George Clark decided to promote the Oxfordshire seriesin conjunction with the transfer of the VCH to the Institute of HistoricalResearch. With funding from the city of Oxford – ‘the City being the first localauthority, as far as is known, to make a grant towards the expenses of the History’– and the Oxford colleges, the project was revived.7 In 1937 work resumed inWarwickshire when local authority funding was made available fromWarwickshire County Council, the cities of Birmingham and Coventry, theboroughs of Nuneaton, Sutton Coldfield and Stratford, trustees of ShakespeareBirthplace Trust, and private donations. A local editor was appointed, PhilipStyles, on a part-time basis, initially to complete two volumes on the county.Much of Warwickshire III, Barlichway Hundred, had been typeset by the time thatwar broke out in 1939, and volumes IV, V and VI appeared respectively in 1947,1949 and 1951.8

Immediately after the war, a further initiative came from Wiltshire, for whichno pre-1914 volumes had appeared. In 1947, and coincidental with the opening ofthe county archive office, a county committee was formed, and with funding froma combination of the county council, the borough of Swindon and the city ofSalisbury, a scheme was agreed whereby research would be undertaken in thecounty, and the University of London would be responsible for publication. Anambitious plan for Wiltshire was drawn up in 1948 with the intention that itshould be completed in 20 volumes. What was developing here was a new model,which depended not on local patronage through a committee of grandees as in thepre-First World War period, but a working committee drawing funding from localauthorities which could view the VCH as an extension of their commitment toarchive conservation.

Hoskins clearly got wind of these developments, and recognised a potentialopening for work in Leicestershire. He had been teaching at University College

7 VCH Oxfordshire I (1907), II (1939), III (1954).8 C. R. J. Currie and C. P. Lewis, A Guide to English County Histories, Stroud, 1994, 408.

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since 1931, but had spent the years 1941–5 as a statistician with the Board ofTrade in London. He returned to Leicester in 1946, and was shortly joinedat University College by Jack Simmons, as first professor in the Department ofHistory. Simmons shared Hoskins’s interests in landscapes and buildings, andtogether with F. L. Attenborough, the College principal, they formed a strongteam which led eventually to the setting up of the Department of English LocalHistory in 1948.9 The result, in Joan Thirsk’s words, was that ‘some of the mostexhilarating and perhaps most satisfying years in Hoskins’s academic life spannedthe period 1947–51’.10 One of the exhilarations was the Leicestershire VCH.

Quite what Hoskins knew about the VCH at this time is unclear. He hadcertainly used a number of volumes for south-western counties while preparing his1929 London M.Sc thesis, but as for its organisation this is less clear.11 He initiallyapproached R. H. Tawney, who can perhaps best be described as his mentor inthese years. Tawney had referred him to Professor V. H. Galbraith, Director of theInstitute of Historical Research 1944–8. Hoskins also admitted he knew nothingof the financial arrangements for the VCH. Galbraith, aware of both the Wiltshireinitiative, and also of continuing interest in other counties including Oxfordshire,passed Hoskins’s letter to A. Taylor Milne, the Secretary and Librarian of theIHR, with a comment that the model proposed for Wiltshire might be followed inLeicestershire with a local committee, an honorary editor and a paid assistant.Hoskins met with Galbraith and Taylor in the IHR, where they discussed using theWiltshire model in Leicestershire.12

With the support of Simmons and Attenborough, Hoskins threw himself intoorganising the VCH. By 22 October 1947 he had recruited the local committee,which was to be chaired by Sir Robert Martin, of Woodhouse Eaves,Loughborough, chairman of the county council, and also of the LeicestershireArchaeological Society. The other members were to be Simmons, Professor A.Hamilton Thompson who, among other roles, was President of the LeicestershireArchaeological Society, the Provost of Leicester Cathedral, Alderman C. R. Keen,chairman of the University College Finance Committee, Colin Ellis – ‘a wellknown man locally and a prominent member of the Leicester Literary andPhilosophical Society’ – and himself, described as ‘Reader (Designate) in EnglishLocal History at University College, Leicester’. Hoskins admitted to havingdifficulty finding a convenient date for a meeting for such a high-powered group,but meantime he had also drawn up ‘an excellent list of contributors – all trainedhistorians except one (the writer on Sport, which does not seem to attractacademic research)’. He had also arranged to see Philip Styles, the WarwickshireVCH local editor, for some advice on how to proceed.13 On 25 November 1947

9 University of Leicester Archive (ULA), P/AR24, p. 13; E15/1/1–2.10 Joan Thirsk, ‘William George Hoskins, 1908–1992’, Proceedings of the British Academy 87 (1994),

345.11 W. G. Hoskins, Fieldwork in Local History (1967), 16–17. My thanks to Dr Robert Peberdy for

help on this point.12 VCH, Hoskins to V. H. Galbraith, 5 Aug 1947; Galbraith memorandum, 6 Aug 1947; Hoskins to

Milne, 27 Oct 1947.13 VCH, Hoskins to Milne, 22 Oct 1947.

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Hoskins and Simmons jointly wrote a memorandum to Attenborough stating thecase for reviving and completing the Leicestershire VCH.14

Hoskins needed to know more of the funding position. Milne, on behalf of theIHR, explained how it worked in Wiltshire and Warwickshire. In Wiltshire it wasestimated that £5,000 would be needed to prepare five volumes. This figurewas based on what had happened in Warwickshire where the county council andthe municipal authorities in Birmingham and Coventry had ordered in advance allthe outstanding volumes (III–VII). These subscriptions, together with donationsamounting to several hundred pounds, had been sufficient to produce volumes IIIand IV without loss, with London paying the editorial and administrativeexpenses and carrying the cost of publication.15 Armed with this knowledge,Hoskins made a formal approach to the Institute of Historical Research toapprove new work in Leicestershire under his leadership.16

Hoskins’s original idea seems to have been to complete the proposed four-volume series. The first Leicestershire volume (I) had appeared in 1907, andHoskins intended to complete volume II with its general essays, and then toproduce the two topographical volumes.17 For volume II he knew that earlier workhad been done and was available in the VCH archive (stored in Northamptonshireat that time). He intended to build on this for volume II, although it was not clearthat it could be recovered and made available for some months.18 He proposed anew departure for the VCH by suggesting that volume III should be a singlevolume on the county town, leaving all the topographical studies of the otherparishes in the county to volume IV. L. F. Salzman, the VCH general editor,accepted the idea of a volume based on Leicester but was less sure of the otherproposals, suggesting that Leicestershire might require a total of five or even sixvolumes if it was to cover all 300 parishes adequately. Hoskins rather dismissivelynoted that there were only 220 and not 300 parishes, but he accepted that this wasa matter for the IHR’s own planning committee to decide.19 In June 1947 the VCHgeneral committee meeting at the IHR approved the resumption of work inLeicestershire.20

Discussing the content of volumes was easy: making the project work inpractice was a different matter. In the post-war years, as research and writing weremoved from the VCH London Office to county offices, often located in newlyopened Record Offices, the procedure was to appoint a local figure as part-time,honorary editor, with a full-time paid assistant who would, in effect, do all thework. This was the model initially developed in Wiltshire, although G. M. Young,who accepted the position of editor, did so ‘on the clear understanding thatsomeone else should do the work. And that part of the bargain has been very

14 ULA E15/1/2.15 VCH, Milne to Hoskins, 28 Oct 1947.16 VCH, Hoskins to Milne, 22 Oct 1947; VCH General Committee minutes 1943–8, 89.17 VCH Leicestershire II, xiii.18 VCH Archive, Milne to Hoskins, 21 Nov 1947. It was eventually returned to the IHR in October

1948 when Hoskins was invited to inspect it at his leisure: Milne to Hoskins, 28 Oct 1948.19 VCH, Hoskins to Milne, 12 Mar 1948.20 VCH, Milne to Hoskins, 11 Mar 1948; Hoskins to Milne, 12 Mar 1948; VCH Minutes 1943–8, 101.


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strictly observed.’21 Hoskins was, of course, to be the editor for Leicestershire,although he had no intention of being hands-off in Young’s style, but before anassistant could be appointed some funds were needed.

Hoskins’s plan, following the example set elsewhere, was to raise funding forfive years, and then to rely on the success of the project to generate further funds.By the end of February 1948 he had secured £250 a year for five years fromLeicester City Council, and was expecting a grant from the county council,although they were ‘still fiddling about making enquiries as to what other countiesdo &c., and I think we shall be alright in the end but it is a tiresome delay’ – areference to their consultations with Warwickshire and Birmingham to establishexactly what the practice was.22 He was also approaching the Leicester Lit andPhil, and the Leicestershire Archaeological Society for contributions, and heexpected also to make ‘a public appeal for the balance of the income we require’.By early March 1948 Hoskins was sufficiently confident of funding from thecounty council that ‘Simmons and I are going ahead with the detailed planning ofthe volumes, especially of volume II, and hope to have all this arranged by the endof the Easter vacation’.23 County Council funding was confirmed by June 1948.24

With progress being made, the Leicestershire committee turned itself frombeing provisional into being permanent, and in December 1948 it authorised theappointment of an assistant editor at a salary of £400. When this was advertisedearly in 1949, 24 applications were received. Richard McKinley, a researchstudent at the University of Manchester, was appointed in March 1949, andallowed time to complete his M.A. thesis before moving to Leicester to start workon 1 June 1949.25

The VCH Leicestershire Committee was supplemented by a local editorialboard, which held its first meeting on 13 January 1949 with Colin Ellis in thechair. Hoskins, Simmons, J. H. Plumb and Dr C. H. Thompson, the honorarysecretary, attended. Thompson had been appointed in September 1947 as the firstLeicestershire county archivist, when the newly formed office was formallyestablished at the County Offices in Greyfriars. The other member of the editorialcommittee was Professor Hamilton Thompson, who had been nominated by theVCH Central Committee in London. He was not able to attend this inauguralmeeting. Hoskins proposed that volume II should include general historicalarticles as was normal for the second volume of the series in other counties,volume III would be on the Borough of Leicester, and volumes IV and V wouldprovide detailed topographical treatment of all places in the county other thanLeicester. He tabled his plans for volumes II and III.26 He was preparing a draft

21 VCH, Hoskins to Milne, 3 Nov 1948; G. M. Young, ‘County History’, Wiltshire Archaeological andNatural History Magazine, LIII (1949), 219.

22 ROLLR, DE 3220/35, DE 7147/2, 147, 149.23 VCH, Hoskins to Milne, 29 Feb 1948, 6 Mar 1948; VCH Minutes 1943–8, 94.24 VCH Minutes 1943–8, 101; ROLLR, DE 7147/2, p. 145.25 VCH, Hoskins to Milne, 27 Feb 1949; ROLLR, DE 3220, Editorial Board 17 Mar 1949; VCH

Minutes 1943–8, 108, 116, 126.26 ROLLR, DE 3220, Editorial Board minutes, 13 Jan 1949.

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plan for volumes II and III to go to a meeting of the VCH General Committee on7 March, and he had made arrangements for all the Leicestershire VCH materialheld in the Northamptonshire store at Goltho, to be moved to the Hatton Room atUniversity College to join the library of the Department of English Local History.It arrived in two large packing-cases and turned out to include the unexpectedbonus of 33,000 words of text on Leicester borough, together with the parish slipswhich had been collected for every county in the years prior to the First WorldWar. Working space was also provided in the library for McKinley.27

While Hoskins was waiting for McKinley to take up the assistant editor post, hewas busy planning the general essays for volume II, and the Leicester essays forvolume III. None of the material which had come from Goltho was consideredadequate to task at this stage, all of it having been written 40 or more yearspreviously. McKinley’s first task in June 1949 was to write material on politicalhistory for the periods 1066–1530 and 1885–1950, with J. H. Plumb filling the1530–1885 gap.28 McKinley also revised all of Sister Elspeth’s religious housescontributions, and Cox’s essay on forestry. Harrison’s work on agriculture was setaside, and Hoskins signed up Rodney Hilton and Joan Thirsk to write theagricultural history of the county, Hilton before and Thirsk after 1540. Hoskinssigned up further authors for industry and trade, communications (with A. TemplePaterson on canals and Jack Simmons on railways), population, cultural history(Simmons again), art history and patronage, education and sport. In the end, andeven after some contributors had fallen by the wayside, it made up two volumes,while his own contribution (apart from editing the volumes) was a miserly threepages on footwear – he had originally said he would write all the economichistory.29 For the Leicester volume (originally intended to be III but eventuallymoved to IV when II overran) it was agreed to include topographical studies of sixformerly agricultural parishes which had been incorporated into the city, namelyAylestone, Belgrave, Braunstone, Evington, Humberstone and Knighton.

With his characteristic energy, Hoskins was busy not only signing up authorsand keeping both the county committee and the editorial committee happy, but hewas also making increasing demands on the VCH Central Office at the Institute ofHistorical Research. When Ralph Pugh succeeded L. F. Salzman as general editorin November 1949, he found himself immediately under pressure from Hoskins,who requested the services of the architectural historian who at that time wasresponsible for providing detailed material on a small number of importantbuildings, including the parish church, ‘in the first place for the City of Leicesteritself, to which we are devoting a whole volume (vol III). The historical chaptersare well in hand but I must make some definite arrangement for the topographicalsection, if we are to complete both parts of the volume simultaneously.’ Hoskinscharacteristically added that there would not be a great amount of work to do‘since the city councillors have destroyed nearly everything of historic interest, butthere are five (town) medieval churches and a number of medieval village churches

27 VCH, Hoskins to Milne, 13 Feb 1949.28 ROLLR, DE 3220, Editorial Board report 31 Dec 1949.29 VCH, Hoskins to Milne, 24 Jan 1950.


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(about six, I believe) of parishes now within the city boundaries. The amount ofinteresting domestic architecture would be small also, even taken up to about1850–60.’ Hoskins also requested support from Pugh in the form of a researchassistant to work on classes of records in the Public Record Office ‘such as theextents, the papers of the Committee for Compounding and State Papersreferences generally’.30 This was all in his first letter to Pugh!

Hoskins’s reference to the topographical material is a reminder that theLeicestershire project was at this point swimming in relatively unchartedwaters. The topographical volumes had traditionally been researched andwritten in London, with fieldwork restricted to the architectural information.Today, the topographical studies are almost invariably written in the countiesby professional staff and volunteers who learn the job as they proceed, usuallyfrom a more experienced colleague, but there was no precedent in 1949.Even Pugh, as general editor, had little experience – his first topographicalpublications for Wiltshire were in volume VII of the county set, which waspublished in 1953.

Hoskins assumed that he was responsible for recruiting topography authors,just as he was for the general volumes, and he assumed he could decide – as indeedhe did – that the first Hundred to be studied would be Gartree. He reported to theVCH Leicestershire Editorial Board on 17 March 1949 that ‘a substantial amountof work has also been done on volume IV … the Hundred of Gartree. A smallnumber of contributors are also engaged in writing up the histories of otherparishes in various parts of the county.’ These presumably included Miss O. P.Wilson, who he had signed up to write the parish history of Aylestone, Miss RuthBird, Senior History Mistress at Wyggeston Grammar School, who was to doHumberstone and Knighton,31 and Mr Bremer and Miss D. Shipley, who were towrite Evington. McKinley was assigned Braunstone and Belgrave, the other twoparishes which were to be covered in volume III.

Hoskins was aware that contributors to the topographical volumes would needsome guidance. In his report written at the end of 1949 on progress during theyear he wrote that:

There are some 200 or more places to be dealt with in this way, and the difficultyof securing competent contributors for this section of the History are great. Inorder to give possible contributors guidance on the form of these accounts, thestandard required, and the sources to be used, the Editor and Assistant Editorhave between them prepared a specimen account of average length (4000–5000words) relating to the village of Great Stretton. This will be duplicated andcirculated to those who are interested as possible contributors.

Contributors were to be paid at the rate of 30s per 1,000 words. Hoskins signedup anyone who was available. J. M. (Michael) Lee, later editor of volume V, firstmet Hoskins during the summer of 1951 when he was on vacation following his

30 VCH Archives, Hoskins to R. B. Pugh, 13 Nov 1949; R. P. Pugh, The Victoria History of theCounties of England General Introduction (1970), 24.

31 Oxford DNB (2004), 69420.

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first year at Oxford. He was 19 at the time, but when Hoskins found out that helived in Castle Donington he promptly signed him up for the VCH parish entry.32

Hoskins persuaded his editorial committee in Leicester that because of thework of the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments it was his view that ‘weshall reduce the architectural description of churches and domestic buildingsto the minimum necessary for their intelligent appreciation … The saving of spaceso occasioned in the topographical volumes of the History will be valuable for anextended treatment of the history of each parish, which in the past has tended tobe regarded almost purely as the descent of the manor, to the neglect of widerconsiderations.’ Even so, in a report prepared for his editorial board on 15October 1949, Hoskins wrote the following:

It is becoming clear that we may have to contemplate one such topographicalvolume for each of the six Leicestershire hundreds. Thus the Hundred of Gartreecontains 47 parishes and chapelries. An average account of each can hardly run toless than 4000 to 5000 words, according to the size and importance of the place.On this reckoning, a volume of some 200–240,000 words is required for this oneHundred if the work is to be done at all adequately. This allows only of the mostconcise accounts as the specimen history of Great Stretton, circulated last year,showed. Work on the Gartree volume is proceeding on this assumption. It will beappreciated that this would mean the completion of the Leicestershire History ineight volumes instead of the four originally envisaged.

He had also more or less completed the draft of Great Stretton, and he took theprecaution of having the VCH Leicestershire Editorial Board read this so that itcould agree with him that it was as compressed as it could reasonably be and that‘it was plainly impossible to compress the topographical accounts into twovolumes’.33

Great Stretton was only just down the road from Hoskins’s home at WigstonMagna, but more importantly it was one of Leicestershire’s DMVs, which held aparticular interest for Hoskins at this time. He had referred to it as such, albeitbriefly, in an article published in 1944, and he returned to it in 1956.34 He wasworking on the draft of the proposed Great Stretton entry in the autumn 1949. On22 November 1949 he wrote to Dorothy Slatter at the Museum and Art Gallerysaying that he and McKinley were preparing a specimen account, and ‘I havechosen Great Stretton for this first specimen as it is an interesting place and nottoo large to begin with’. He then provided a list of things on which he wantedcopies of any notes she may have had relating to Great Stretton from deeds andmaps and a transcript of the Visitation records. She supplied him with some of the

32 It was never published as such, but appeared as a separate article: J. M. Lee, ‘The Rise and Fall of aMarket Town: Castle Donington in the Nineteenth Century’, TLAHS, XXXII (1956), 53–80. TheVCH has the original typescript.

33 ROLLR, DE 3220, Editorial Board reports 15 Oct, 31 Dec 1949; DE 3220/36 Minutes of theGeneral Committee, 9 Nov 1950.

34 W. G. Hoskins, ‘The deserted villages of Leicestershire’, TLAS, 22: 4 (1944–5), 258, in which henoted that it had been reduced to no more than 5–6 families in the reign of Henry VIII, and ‘Sevendeserted village sites in Leicestershire’, TLAHS, 32 (1956), 42–3.


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material in a letter written on 25 November.35 Hoskins lectured to theArchaeological Society about the VCH on 24 November 1949.36

In February 1950 Hoskins submitted to Pugh his topographical entry on GreatStretton. Pugh’s response provides us with some idea of his reaction. He wasparticularly concerned with length. Great Stretton was simply a chapelry in theparish of Great Glen, and so not really a parish history at all. In 1931 it had apopulation of just 56, and yet Hoskins had written 5,000 words, ‘which wereckon here to be a fair average for a rural parish of substantial size’. In addition,Great Stretton was in a place with a straightforward manorial descent, no school,charity, railway station or post office. Pugh added, diplomatically, that ‘I amcoming to believe that it is a mistake to try to use the VCH as an organ forpublishing definitive parish histories’, but it was clearly a problem to haveHoskins bouncing him into taking decisions that would apply widely and mightlater be regretted.37

The problem was that while Hoskins had written what was in some respects astandard entry much like those he must have read in the Rutland volume, he hadadded a section entitled ‘The Village’, which was a much more explicit economichistory of the community. Pugh had his own ideas of how the VCH shoulddevelop, which included an expansion of the sections on religion, to includenonconformity, and a broadening of the education section. He also wanted greaterattention to be paid to enclosure of the fields and to local government. Hoskinswanted rather more than this and insisted on travelling to London to take up thecudgels with Pugh: ‘the point you raise in general about the length of the article is,as you say, so important that I feel I must take an opportunity of airing my viewsabout it in person’.38 Unfortunately we have no record of this meeting, althoughthe text as published in 1964 was more or less as prepared in 1949.

Meantime, in January 1950 Hoskins suggested that the VCH CentralCommittee should consider an additional volume of ‘Leicestershire Biographies’ – aview that had been endorsed by his editorial committee. He wanted more picturesand maps – ‘I am a great believer in the value of maps’ – than was standard at thattime, and he would have them drawn in Leicester. The VCH Central committeeaccepted the need for more maps, but turned down the biographies.39

All this enthusiasm was fine, but Hoskins’s biggest problem between 1949 andhis departure for Oxford in 1952 was that so many of the authors he had signedup either failed to produce at all, or failed to pass muster on quality, and this hadthe effect of slowing down the whole enterprise. Following the meeting at the IHRon 15 March 1950, Pugh recorded that Hoskins was confidently expecting todeliver volume II by Spring 1951 and volume III (still expected to be on Leicesterat this stage) six months later, and that he was now planning six topographical

35 ROLLR, DE 3220/36.36 TLAS, 26 (1950), 8. The lecture was not reported in Transactions and does not appear to have been

published.37 VCH, Pugh to Hoskins, 9 Mar 1950.38 VCH, Hoskins to Pugh, 13 Mar 1950.39 VCH, Hoskins to Milne, 24 Jan 1950; Milne to Hoskins, 27 Jan 1950.

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volumes, with a volume for each hundred, or 40–50 parishes per volume. The firstone, on Gartree Hundred, he hoped to have ready by Spring 1952.40

Hoskins’s optimism was commendable, but persuading his authors to produceproved much more difficult than he seems to have anticipated and, when they didso, to meet his own rigorous standards. The section on hunting for volume II(subsequently volume III) was to be written by Major Guy Paget, a scion of a localgentry family, and a member of the VCH Leicestershire committee. Hoskinsrejected his entry ‘out of hand’ because (as he told Pugh):

he could not be made to conform to any of the rules, refused to alter a line when Ireturned his contribution with my suggestions for improvement, and now says hewants to put the whole matter before the Editorial Committee, a step which Iwelcome though it will mean an unseemly wrangle I fear. I need hardly say that Ipropose to stick to my guns over this. You will have no idea what his stuff waslike, which is a pity.

Pugh evidently defended Hoskins’s decision to Paget, repeating the mantra that theeditor’s decision was final.41 Subsequently the problem solved itself in a rather tragicway, although Hoskins could scarcely hide his relief when, writing to Pugh on 26March 1952, he reported that Paget ‘killed himself in the hunting field, or perhapsI should say “was killed” to avoid ambiguity. It was, I imagine, his idea of theperfect end – knowing him as I did – and it had the incidental effect, if one isn’t beingtoo unkind, of solving for us what was an insoluble problem.’ He promptly signedup Colin Ellis to finish the article which he believed would ensure the final productwould be ‘perfectly satisfactory’.42 The article appeared under joint authorship.

Hoskins was soon wilting under the strain. McKinley had proved to be a keyappointment, and the editorial board agreed in October 1950 to increase hissalary from £400 to £450 a year. It also accepted the need to relieve Hoskinshimself, and for 1951 Dr C. H. Thompson was appointed as co-editor. For all hisenergy Hoskins could not prevent slippage. In January 1950 he told theLeicestershire committee that he hoped to have all the contributions for volumes IIand III ready by the end of the year, with one or two coming in no later thanMarch 1951. By January 1951 he was anticipating volume II reaching CentralOffice in the middle of the summer, and volume III later in the year. Neither hadreached completion when in June 1951 Hoskins was appointed to a Readershipin Economic History at Oxford.43 According to Joan Thirsk he had become‘increasingly fretful and finally exasperated with committees, the tedium andfrustrations of their meetings, and the thankless burdens of editorship’. He had nointention of giving up; in fact, he confidently expected to remain as editor whilethe two volumes currently in preparation were being completed, and then to resignin favour of McKinley, ‘who can do the topographical volumes, and will do themwell under the supervision of [Jack] Simmons here’.44

40 VCH, Pugh to Milne, 15 Mar 1950.41 VCH, Hoskins to Pugh, 11 Oct 1950; Pugh to Hoskins, 14 Nov 1950.42 VCH, Hoskins to Pugh, 26 Mar 1952.43 ROLLR, DE 3220, Editorial Board, 27 Oct 1950; VCH, Hoskins to Pugh, 21 Jan 1951.44 Thirsk, ‘William George Hoskins’, 347; VCH, Hoskins to Pugh, 8 June 1951.


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He had been let down on religious houses by Hamilton Thompson, who was inpoor health and died in 1952 without doing any of the work. He tried to persuadePugh to loan him central staff to do the research, but was refused.45 He wasfurious: ‘I am deeply perturbed by your inability to help us in the presentemergency over the Leicestershire volume’ he told Pugh. ‘It was clearly said at theoutset that such expert help would be available in London if required.’ Nor wouldhe accept Pugh’s suggestion of leaving the religious houses chapter to a latervolume: ‘its proper place is in volume II…. The present emergency was none of ourmaking: it could not have been foreseen. I would have thought if there was ever acase for receiving help from the central staff, this was it.’ Part of his haste wasbecause he had to resign the editorship by 30 June 1952 by the terms of hisappointment at Oxford. He now threatened to resign early ‘if I see no prospect ofcompleting even volume II, as it was originally planned and as it was quite properto plan it…. I am not prepared to linger on doing nothing effective towards thecompletion of the Leicestershire task.’46

Pugh later recalled that Hoskins ‘asked me at very short notice to providesomeone on my staff to revise the accounts of Leicestershire religious houses.I explained that such requests could not be acceded to at such short notice. WGHwas annoyed and only abated his annoyance when he learnt that the only availableperson was [Benny] Wells who was leaving the service of the I.H.R.’47 Hoskinscalmed down and after an intervention from Simmons agreed that McKinley, whoHoskins referred to as ‘a willing horse’, should update the original work of SisterElspeth.48 Working, if not exactly cordial, relations were re-established.

By 10 October 1951 it was clear that Hoskins’s hopes were fading. When hewrote his editorial report for the Leicestershire committee he hoped that volume IImight reach the central office by the end of the year. McKinley had revised andupdated the religious houses chapters, as well as sections on mining andquarrying, and banking, but Hoskins was still awaiting five chapters, includingSimmons’s contribution on railways. Volume III (on Leicester) was even less welladvanced, although he remained optimistic about having it ready for Spring 1952.He noted also that McKinley was giving lectures on local history at theDepartment of Adult Education on Market Harborough and Kibworth: ‘It maywell bring in a number of contributors or helpers in the completion of the parishhistories.’ Great and Little Stretton, Great Glen and King’s Norton were completeand work was reported to be proceeding on Castle Donington (Lee) and MarketHarborough.49

McKinley succeeded Hoskins as editor on 1 July 1952, with a salary of £650.If he thought he now had full responsibility for the VCH in Leicestershire he was

45 VCH, Hoskins to Pugh, 13 June 1951.46 VCH, Hoskins to Pugh, 22 June 1951.47 VCH, ‘Notes of the General Editor’s Relations with Leicestershire editors, 1952–5’ (1977) (hereafter

Pugh 1977). The notes are annotated by Pugh: ‘They do not form a comprehensive record but painta picture.’

48 VCH, Hoskins to Pugh, 13 June, 25 July 1951; Pugh to Hoskins, 19 June 1951.49 ROLLR, DE 3220, Editorial board papers including a statement by Hoskins, 3 Oct 1951, and

editor’s report dated 10 Oct 1951.

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soon disabused because Hoskins was not about to allow him to take overunfinished business: ‘I shall be completing the editing of volume II in collaborationwith him’, Hoskins noted, ‘and possibly volume III (the City of Leicester) also’.Hoskins wanted at least one of these to be published ‘before our public moneyruns out, or we stand no chance at all of getting any more’. Also in July 1952Hoskins promised the material to Pugh, and urged a publication date before theirmoney ran out or ‘we shall run the serious risk of a complete collapse of localinterest, not to say the total drying up of all the income’. He sent the first batch ofmaterial to London on 7 August 1952.50

It now transpired that the material was far too extensive. It ran to almost300,000 words without footnotes, and was in fact the equivalent of two volumes‘of the standard post-war size’. Hoskins reckoned the first of the two volumeswould be around 280 pages. The result was a decision to divide the county ofLeicestershire volume (II) into two (II and III), with the first volume coveringreligious houses, political and parliamentary history and agrarian history, andrunning to about 150,000 words, and the second volume including the sectionsomitted (industry and trade, communications, population, art history andpatronage, education, Roman Catholicism and sport). Simmons’s promisedchapter on cultural history appears to have been omitted at this point. The volumewas to run to 130,000 words. The City of Leicester was still to be covered in aseparate volume, but this would now be number IV.

Still there was trouble ahead when Hoskins objected to a directive from Pughabout abbreviated references, and insisted on sending the material to London andleaving the general editor to sort out any difficulties. He and McKinley would sortout the discrepancies in the second volume on the county. Hoskins and McKinleywrote a joint editorial report on 22 September 1952 noting that volume II hadgone to London, and that volume III (now renumbered to be the second generalvolume on the county) should be completed by the end of October. The Board alsoaccepted that following the death of Hamilton Thompson, his place on thecommittee should be taken by Hoskins’s successor at Leicester, H. P. R. Finberg.51

In fact, in June 1953 Hoskins was asked to rejoin the editorial board, and thecounty committee.

The first of the two volumes was in galley proof by January 1953, withHoskins still very much in the driving seat. In February he wrote to Pugh from AllSouls, returning ‘the completed Hilton chapter at last. I hope I have done all to itthat I promised.’ He had sent a copy to Rodney Hilton. But he then becameannoyed with Pugh for not acting quickly enough; as Pugh later recalled, inSeptember 1953: ‘WGH and Jack Simmons pressed me in somewhat hostile tonesto bring out II. I explained that I was as anxious for its appearance as they.’ Thiswas to be a recurring theme.52

50 VCH, Hoskins to Pugh, 13 May, 18 July, 7 Aug 1952.51 VCH, Hoskins to Pugh, 26 Aug 1952; ROLLR DE 3220, Editorial Board Report, 22 Sept 1952.52 VCH, Pugh to Hoskins, 27 Jan 1953; Hoskins to Pugh, 8 Feb 1953; Pugh, 1977; ROLLR, DE 3220,

Editorial Board Report, 11 June 1953.


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As the first of the two county volumes now moving towards publication, a newissue arose over the dedication. Pugh later recalled that ‘WGH asked me privatelywhether II could be dedicated to Sir Robert Martin. I explained that each volumewas inscribed to the memory of Queen Victoria, and that great importance wasattached to the continuation of this practice. The request was then withdrawn.’Pugh seems to have forgotten that McKinley also pressed him on the matter,writing on 24 July 1953:

Professor Simmons has suggested to me that in view of the great part played by SirRobert Martin in reviving the V.C.H. in Leicestershire and in securing itscontinuance, it is very desirable to make some special acknowledgement to him.The Professor suggests that this could best be done by dedicating to Sir Robert thenew volumes of the history, or at least vol. II. This of course raises difficulties asthe V.C.H. as a whole is dedicated to Queen Victoria. I feel however that effortshould be made to overcome this disadvantage. To dedicate the LeicestershireV.C.H. to Sir Robert would not only please Sir Robert himself very greatly, but itwould be very favourably received in the county generally. Some specialrecognition of his services is undoubtedly called for, and if it should prove quiteimpossible to include a dedication to him, I think that some special reference to hisefforts should be made in the preface. I may mention that there is a precedent, asV.C.H. Rutland II was dedicated to a private person.

Pugh refused to be moved, responding to McKinley on 8 August 1953:

First, the dedication of each volume to Queen Victoria’s memory is treated withdeep seriousness here and periodically forms the subject of correspondence withthe Palace. For this reason we could not, in my judgement, introduce a seconddedication without reference to the Queen. I do not feel that I can raise thequestion in that quarter at the present time, notwithstanding the partial precedentset in the case of Rutland II.

He went on to add his concerns about setting a precedent since there werecommittees in other counties and their chairmen had also moved mountains suchas Alderman Robins in Wiltshire, while elsewhere chairmen were not necessarilyvery active. Despite this defensive stand, at a meeting in September 1953 therequest was renewed by Jack Simmons when Pugh gave the same answer. Butthe VCH committee was less stubborn than the general editor: ‘The upshot’, Pughlater recalled, was that ‘the VCH committee agreed to give a leather-bound copyof each volume to each chairman and an excessively fulsome praise of Sir Robertwas inserted in the volume’.53

Pugh, of course, wrote the editorial introduction. He sent it to Hoskins forapproval on 2 March 1954: ‘I enclose the draft of the Editorial Note to VCHLeicestershire II and of the title-page to that volume. The draft has already passedthrough McKinley but I should like you to see it also, in case you have anycomments to make.’ Hoskins responded positively without any apparent concernthat Pugh had overdone the fulsome praise:

53 Pugh, 1977: VCH, Pugh to Hoskins, 5 Mar 1954: ‘It was decided by the central V.C.H. Committeelast term that Sir Robert Martin should receive a copy of Leicestershire II bound in half-leather onpublication.’

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It now begins to look exciting after all these years of preparation. I have taken outone of my degrees – it looks too much with all this lettering. The draft EditorialNote is admirable. Your reference to Sir Robert Martin is excellent. Would it bepossible to present him with a complimentary copy of the volume, do you think?It would be a handsome gesture, which would delight him personally.54

Hoskins added that he had discussed whose names should appear in thepreliminary matter as the editors, and had agreed with McKinley that volumes IIand III should be edited by Hoskins assisted by McKinley, volume IV should beedited by McKinley assisted by Hoskins, and volume V onwards by McKinleyalone: ‘This seemed to represent a fair attribution of the credit and labour.’55

Hoskins appeared on the title page as W. G. Hoskins, M.A., Ph.D.: he was notnamed as a contributor of any of the articles to volume II. Pugh acknowledged inthe editorial note that he had ‘planned the present volume, its successor, and thearticles which are to form the history of Leicester City and edited much ofthe material submitted’. Of Martin he wrote: ‘deep gratitude must be felt, as muchby the University of London as by Leicestershire, to Sir Robert Martin, Chairmanalike of the Leicestershire County Council and of the local V.C.H. Committee. Hislively interest in the Leicestershire history and powerful local influence havecontributed most valuably to the whole enterprise.’ The contribution of ProfessorJack Simmons was also acknowledged.56

Even with publication looming there was still time for trouble. At a meeting ofthe VCH Leicestershire general committee on 25 June 1954 which Pugh wasunable to attend due to illness, with volume III going through the press, Colin Ellisraised (as Pugh recalled it) ‘the question of some stylistic alterations that I hadmade in the text of a (poor) article that he had written’. McKinley told thecommittee ‘that certain difficulties had arisen between the General Editor andhimself regarding contributions to Volume III’, and the situation deterioratedfurther following the meeting when McKinley wrote to Pugh about the Elliscomplaint. As Pugh later recalled: ‘I received a letter from McKinley couched invery unsuitable terms about this incident. I summoned McKinley and returned theletter to him saying that I could not accept it. There was also a milder protest fromProfessor Allaway. These incidents were frequently reverted to by McKinley.’57

The articles in question must have been Allaway’s piece on Adult and FurtherEducation, and Ellis’s revision of the troublesome text on hunting.

With volumes II and III finally out in 1954 and 1955 respectively, attentionturned to volume IV on Leicester. McKinley reported on 9 May 1955 to theLeicestershire editorial board that completion had taken longer than anticipated‘partly through the dilatoriness of one contributor’;58 in fact, the contributor onRoman Leicester was Frank Cottrill, formerly Keeper of Archaeology at LeicesterMuseum. He moved to a similar position in Winchester in 1947, and simply didnot have the time to complete the work. In the role of editor, McKinley struggled54 VCH, Hoskins to Pugh, 4 Mar 1954.55 VCH, Hoskins to Pugh, 4 Mar 1954.56 VCH Leicestershire II (1954), editorial note.57 Pugh, 1977; ROLLR, DE 3220, Editorial Board Minutes, 25 June 1965.58 ROLLR, DE 3220, Editorial Board Report, 9 May 1955.


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to keep up with Pugh, who thought him dilatory and inefficient. When in October1955 McKinley submitted several articles for volume IV, Pugh found them ‘veryinferior and returned them for revision’:

McKinley sent them back with the minimum of change and with the blandassertion that he thought they would do. The other articles then arrived, several ofthem disorderly or unfinished and in two instances overlapping. The minimum ofhelp was given to my staff and me in putting these things right. Indeed everysuggested change was resisted in terms that were often offensive. My right to alterany articles was also questioned.59

Relations with Pugh remained hostile. McKinley met Pugh on 17 November, but‘nothing very much emerged from this meeting, except that I asked for and waspromised an outline of the design of this volume (which was sent on 30November)…. Mr McKinley left London with unexpected haste and withoutsaying good-bye to me.’60 Janet Martin, McKinley’s assistant 1953–5, recalls howhe ‘wrestled to get contributions out of other people’ for volume IV. Pugh, she alsorecalls, was ‘a terrible trial’ and McKinley ‘was totally incapable of managing sucha man’.61

Pugh finally received the rest of volume IV on 6 December 1955, and the volumecame out in 1958 with nothing on Roman Leicester. It was acknowledged in theeditorial note to be the first VCH volume ‘to be devoted exclusively to the history ofa provincial town’, and ‘it was planned by Dr W. G. Hoskins, while still Reader inEnglish Local History at the University College, Leicester, now the University ofLeicester. Dr Hoskins also commissioned many of the articles that form the volume,but, owing to his departure for Oxford, he was unable to edit them.’62

While these volumes were slowly working through the VCH Central office,McKinley returned to work on the Gartree Hundred volume, with the help fromOctober 1953 of an assistant editor, Mrs Janet Martin, who was completing aBLitt. degree at St Hilda’s, Oxford, and also writing a topographical entry for theVCH Oxford series. With six, rather than the original two, topographical volumesnow planned, funding was becoming an issue. A joint report by Pugh andMcKinley, dated 12 May 1956, set out the difficulties. Hoskins had establishedthe project ‘as a kind of by-product of his academic responsibilities as Reader inEnglish Local History at the University College’, but after he left it was necessaryto replace him with a paid editor (McKinley), and then to appoint an assistant(Martin). Work had progressed satisfactorily, but only 17 of the anticipated 230topographical studies (for the county) had been finished, and among parishes yetto be researched were Market Harborough, Melton Mowbray and Loughborough.To continue, the contributing bodies needed to increase their contributions toprovide an annual total of £2,400.63

59 Pugh 1977.60 ROLLR, DE 3220, Editorial Board Report, 7 Nov 1955; Pugh, 1977.61 Personal communication, 22 May 2009; Susan Reynolds recalls McKinley being ‘a gloomy character

... difficult to deal with ... he visited as rarely as he could and when he had to he was remote andpretty unfriendly’.

62 VCH Leicester, IV (1958), editorial note.63 ROLLR, DE 3220, Editorial Board Report, 12 May 1956.

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While this message was being absorbed by the various funding bodies,McKinley and Martin continued with their work, and by October 1956 McKinleywas reporting that 32 of the 47 Gartree parishes had been completed, and thatwork was in progress on other parishes and the history of Market Harborough.He expected the volume to be finished by the end of 1957. In November the VCHcommittee agreed to approach the city and county with a view to increasing theircontributions in order to keep the project going until 1963 and give some hope ofcompleting the topographical volumes.64 The original grants from 1948 wererenewed without contention in 1952.65

By 1957, however, the times were not propitious, and on 18 January Simmonswrote to Pugh to tell him the bad news. Pugh should expect to receive notice of ameeting of the committee on 7 February:

this has been called to advise the Committee to abandon the History altogether atleast for the time being. I saw Sir Robert Martin today and he said there was notthe least hope that an approach to the County Council for funds would besuccessful – this of course after he had sounded the Finance Committee informally.All their estimates are to be pruned by 2.5% and it will be virtually impossible toget permission for any additional expenditure even on the most necessary objects.If the County Council, under the sympathetic leadership of Sir Robert Martin,takes this view, it isn’t likely that the City Council will make any grant at all. I feartherefore that the sensible course to take will be to recognise that circumstanceshave been too strong for us and to abandon the completion of the History at vol.V. I hope it will be possible to take up the matter again and carry vols VI–Xthrough when the general financial position is more favourable.66

Sir Robert Martin was gloomy and blunt, and he told the committee that ‘he hadhad preliminary conversations with regard to the appeal to the Local Authoritiesfor a further and larger grant to the work of the VCH of Leicester and that theimpression he had formed was that it would be wiser not to press the applicationduring the present financial emergency’.67

With the project running out of money McKinley jumped ship and on 21 May1957 he wrote his final report as editor before he was to depart in August. Henoted that it would not be possible to complete Gartree Hundred before he left,and that eight or nine parishes would be unfinished.68 The editorial committee meton 12 June 1957 when it agreed on the need to try to complete Gartree Hundred‘by engaging a competent person on a temporary basis for one year at a salary of£1000’.69 In effect, this was to use the money that they could guarantee would beavailable before the county council withdrew its support. John Michael Lee, thenat Eastbourne College, was invited by Simmons to apply. With references from

64 Ed Rep 30 Oct 1956, VCH Leics general comm. minutes 22/11/56.65 ROLLR DE 3220/35, Sir Robert Martin to K. Goodacre, town clerk of Leicester, 27 Nov 1952.66 VCH Archive, Professor Jack Simmons to Pugh, 18 Jan 1957; Pugh to Simmons, 24 Jan 1957.67 ROLLR DE 3220, Minutes of the General Committee, Leicester, 7 Feb 1957.68 ROLLR DE 3220, Editorial Report, 21 May 1957.69 ROLLR DE 3220, Editorial Committee minutes, 12 June 1957; VCH Archive, Memo written by

Pugh, 4 June 1957.


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Hoskins and Simmons, and with parish histories for Castle Donington andLubenham already written, he was the obvious front runner for the position oftemporary local editor. He took up the appointment on 27 August 1957, and wasattached to the Leicester History department for 1957–8.70 His commission was tocomplete a manuscript for each of the seven ancient parishes and two parts ofparishes (18 places in total) on which no work had been done by the previouseditors. But what he found was that

only five ancient parishes (10 places) had been completely finished in accordancewith modern V.C.H. requirements; that fifteen ancient parishes and four parts ofparishes (21 places) either lacked certain necessary sections (e.g. parishadministration, charities), or had not received adequate treatment in topographyand architecture; and more important, that thirteen ancient parishes (16 places)would require quite a considerable amount of re-writing, particularly thosewritten more than five years ago. It appeared that to finish the whole Hundredwas more than a year’s work for a single person.71

Lee worked hard. By April 1958 he had completed articles on the three ancientparishes (6 places) which remained to be written in the first half of thealphabetical list (B–K), and on the hundred of Gartree itself as an introduction, forwhich a map has been drawn. He had also revised articles on twelve parishes, andsearched the printed sources to the remaining four ancient parishes and two partsof parishes (12 places) for which at that time no articles had been prepared. Heexpected to complete work on B–K, the Hundred article, and the map before hiscontract ended.72

Lee’s report was considered at a meeting of the VCH Leicestershire committeeon 30 April 1958 which proved to be exceptionally contentious. It was agreed thatLee could only be expected to complete the B–K section, and that the VCH CentralOffice would attempt to have it sent to the press by the end of December 1958 tobe published as Gartree Hundred Part I.73 The meeting heard that applicationsto the county and city councils had met with limited success. The city had agreedto funding for a further 12 months (£500) in the 1958–9 financial year, and thecounty had agreed to contribute £250 in each of the financial years 1958–9 and1959–60. This was obviously good news, given Sir Robert Martin’s earlier gloom,but Pugh was having none of it and told the committee that this would beinsufficient to complete the volume. The committee was ‘disturbed by the GeneralEditor’s reluctance to give a firm date when the MSS could go to press’. All hewould say was that the Central Office would expect to send Gartree Hundred I(B–K) to press by the end of 1958.

In the face of Pugh’s intransigence, the meeting then discussed what to do.Simmons and Hoskins argued that since there was no guarantee that the volumewould be finished before the funding ran out, the two councils should be informed

70 John Michael Lee, ‘Discovering Provincial Society through the Hoskins circle’, unpublished talk.Copy in VCH archives.

71 ROLLR DE 3220, Editorial Board Report, 15 Apr 1958.72 ROLLR DE 3220, Editorial Report, 15 Apr 1958.73 ROLLR DE 3220, Editorial Report, 15 Apr 1958.

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of this situation.74 According to Pugh, writing later, the meeting was close toagreeing

to call for the immediate payment of the 1958–9 grants, ask Mr Lee to stay forabout six months and put at least a sum of about £250 at my disposal. DrHoskins, however, then moved, and Professor Simmons accepted, a reference backto the two Authorities on the ground that if their grants were drawn upon withoutensuring the completion of Gartree there might be some grounds for a charge ofdeception. I acquiesced in this, believing that the reference-back was probably aformality quickly disposed of. It was only after the meeting that I learnt privatelyfrom Dr Parker [Dr Leslie A. Parker, the county archivist] that the first stage of thereference-back could not begin before July. By that time of course there is a strongprobability that Mr Lee will have made up his mind to take some other post.

Pugh concluded in his own mind that

some members of the Committee (particularly Professor Simmons and Mr Ellis)wish first to have a ‘row’ either with the Institute or with me, and then to proclaimto the world that cooperation is impossible and that they must publish Gartreethemselves…. Hitherto I thought the Leicestershire Committee had mismanagedits affairs but was fundamentally well disposed to the VCH. I am now moststrongly of the opinion that its leading members are ill-intentioned and are tryingto make trouble for the Institute and its officers. Though the facts are hard toprove I have reason to think that they are also trying to stir up dissention in othercommittees.75

Both sides were clearly furious at the outcome of this meeting, but while Pughcould retreat back to London, it was Michael Lee who found himself caughtbetween the warring factions. On 3 June Parker reported to Milne at the IHR thathe and Lee were trying to formulate a plan to make sure Gartree Hundred couldbe finished, but the funds would run out by the end of August which was alsowhen Lee’s contract expired. Leicester had previously agreed to a grant of £500for the year 1958–9 so it could be finished, and the county council to £250 in1958–9 and 1959–60, but that the committee was ‘disturbed by the GeneralEditor’s reluctance to give a firm date when the MSS could go to press’. As aresult, the city had decided to withdraw its grant.76

Lee was also working on a plan to see Gartree finished before his money ranout. He wrote to Pugh on 9 June 1958 setting out the various issues and options ashe saw them:

the local committee has no definite plans and is at the moment just in the throes ofconflicting rumours and intrigue. What I fear is that Sir Robert [Martin] will becometired of this and will cease trying to work for a solution. Here, it seems to me, is anexcellent opportunity to show your good will and weigh in with a definite proposalto Sir Robert himself. My position here will be easier if you could send a definiteoffer from the Institute to finish Gartree for a certain sum within a certain time – orat least if you could take the initiative in setting negotiations for a settlementmoving. It would of course be better if you and I could agree on our proposal…. Ihave offered to write up the unfinished parishes in a part-time capacity….

74 ROLLR DE 3220, Committee minutes, 30 Apr 1958; Pugh, 1977.75 VCH, Pugh memo to IHR Director, 29 May 1958.76 VCH, L. A. Parker to Milne, 3 June 1958.


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The problem as Lee saw it was that relations had completely broken down.‘Simmons’, he continued, ‘has told Parker that the initiative will never come fromLondon. Parker and I feel that it will cut the ground from under Simmons feet ifyou come in at this stage with a firm and generous offer…. You see, what hashappened with the City Museums and Library Committee is that they have passeda vote of what they say is “no confidence” in the London end of the VCHorganisation.’ Lee was clearly fearful that the whole project would collapse: ‘I amafraid that the Simmons party will be able to persuade the County RecordsCommittee to do the same unless we can establish it clearly that the VCH isperfectly prepared to negotiate a business-like agreement….’

Simmons, according to Lee, was intending to subvert the VCH committee inorder to get his way:

Simmons has suggested that instead of calling a proper VCH Committee beforethe next County Records Committee on 4 July, Parker should gather togetherthose members of the VCH Committee who are also on the Records Committee todiscover what attitude they are to take. (This involves Simmons, Col. Freer, theRev. Mr Adams and Mrs Keay, but I understand Mrs Keay never turns up.) I dowish to prevent this. All it will mean I am sure is that Simmons will poison Freerand Adams against us. But if you made a definite proposal now and arranged ameeting of the respective officers as I have suggested to draft a plan to bepresented to the local VCH committee before 4 July, the meeting which Simmonsis suggesting would lose its point…. Your natural reluctance to commit theInstitute to an agreement which involves a time-limit might be a stumbling block.Can you see any way round this? I understand from the Director of the Museumthat the City Committee had been given to understand (presumably by Colin Ellisand Simmons) that one could never secure any kind of guarantee from the VCH.

Lee’s proposal made sense in the light of the local belief that the VCH CentralOffice would never offer a guarantee. It was because of their annoyance over thisthat Hoskins and Simmons wanted the money to be retained in Leicestershire,whereas before 30 April Hoskins had been willing to support a proposal for thefunds to be used to pay for the VCH Central Office to finish the volume. With noguarantees on the table that offer had been retracted on 7 June.77 On 10 June,Parker wrote to Milne to say that in view of the ‘considerable local discontentwith the way the history is handled at your end’, they proposed the convening of ameeting to involve the IHR Director, Pugh, Sir Robert Martin, Lee and himself.

In these combustible circumstances the meeting was called on 24 June inLeicester. Present were Sir Robert Martin, Colin Ellis, L. A. Parker, Lee, the IHRDirector Professor J. Goronway Edwards, Taylor Milne and Pugh, and theintention was ‘to ascertain whether or not some means could be found toovercome the difficulties which had arisen with the parish histories for GartreeHundred’. An unsigned memorandum from this meeting recorded that ‘the crux ofthe matter seemed to be a feeling among members of the Leicestershire Committeethat the London Office was reluctant to give a definite limit as to what it wouldrequire in the way of finance from the local body in order to complete the wholeof Gartree, and firm dates when Gartree Part I and Gartree Part II could go to77 VCH, R50, J. M. Lee to Pugh, 7, 9 June 1958.

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press’. The London contingent accepted that £500 would cover the cost of seeingthe two parts into print, and that if Lee could be retained for a further six months,‘there was a reasonable probability that Gartree B–K would go to press by the endof the calendar year 1958, and Gartree L–W by the end of 1959’. The totalrequirement would be £1,090, and Lee agreed to accept a pay cut if he was askedto stay for the extra time. If the county and city councils paid up their promisedsums for 1958–60, in other words, the books should be finished.78

All this was fine, but naturally enough Lee was concerned with his own future.On 3 June he was interviewed for a research post in the Department ofGovernment at Manchester, and on 14 July 1958 he told Pugh’s assistant,Christopher Elrington, that he had been offered the position which he thought heshould take. His reluctance to stay on is hardly surprising, but it was doublyunfortunate that only five days later he was able to tell Elrington that the financialsituation was saved because the Museum Committee had now endorsed the grantto the VCH: ‘and the Editor can now draw on local funds for completing thework. The Hoskins-Simmons policy has been defeated.’

As a result of these various manoeuvres the only real business of the EditorialCommittee when it met on 22 July 1958, with Hoskins present, was to confirm anextension of Lee’s contract to the end of September 1958, before he departed forManchester. His services were to be retained thereafter in a part-time capacity bypayment of an honorarium to enable him to continue work on parishes L–W. Theintention was that he should complete B–K before he left in September, and L–Wby the end of December 1959. The City members were not particularly happy withthis arrangement: Lee told Elrington on 23 July that ‘the only trouble was causedby the City members who said that if I did not stay 6 months they thought the Citywould withdraw its money. Hoskins and Simmons said hardly a word and SirRobert Martin managed the whole meeting splendidly. The prospect is not verybright but if the City back out, the county may stay with us.’79

At the end of September 1958 Lee departed for Manchester, and for the firsttime since 1949 there was no member of staff for the VCH Leicestershire.80 TheUniversity Library agreed to retain the VCH notes prepared for the Gartreevolumes,81 and a slightly mysterious leaflet was circulated pointing out that from1 October there would be no local editor, the VCH office would close, and thatGartree Hundred would need to be finished ‘under a part-time editor [Lee] whowill be assisted by voluntary helpers’. Volunteers were asked to contact RevDouglas Adams of Market Harborough, who had been a member of the VCHLeicestershire General Committee since 1952.82

Lee continued to work part-time on the parish histories, but to try to avoidsome of the accusations of incompetence that had come from Leicester, it was

78 VCH, Memo of 24 June 1958 meeting.79 ROLLR DE 3220, Editorial Board minutes, 22 July 1958; General Committee minutes, 22 July

1958; VCH, Lee to Christopher Elrington, 23 July 1958.80 Lee’s other contribution to scholarship while at Leicester was Leicestershire History: a handlist to

printed sources in the libraries of Leicester (Leicester, Vaughan College Papers, 4, 1958).81 VCH, Pugh to Miss Rhoda Bennett, 22 Sept 1958; Miss Bennett to Pugh, 23 Sept 1958.82 ROLLR DE 3072/159.


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agreed to set up a sub-committee to handle the Leicestershire volumes. Pughprepared a memo for the committee:

work began on the hundred in 1950 but until 1957 it was never carried onintensively, for during those years Mr McKinley’s main preoccupation, naturallyenough was the preparation of volumes II–IV. When Mr Lee arrived in August1957 he found the texts of over 30 articles, hardly one of which was ready for thepress. Many were only roughly typed… some lacked whole sections; and thearchitectural descriptions were incomplete or needed complete revision. Apart,therefore, from writing the histories of three unwritten parishes, Mr Lee has had agreat deal of disorder to clear up.83

By the time he left for Manchester, Lee had handed over 23 articles to Pugh,together with the introductory Hundred article. The parishes B–K were completeexcept for the architectural entries on which Mrs Margaret Tomlinson, the VCHarchitectural editor, was still working. Pugh found that several of the 13 articles‘are not at present of an acceptable quality, and cannot be published withoutconsiderable revision… many of the articles exhibit those shortcomings that aresometimes thought to characterise the “old style” VCH’. This is because somesources had not been used, including the tithe awards and Parliamentary Surveys.Even more concerning was the fact that altogether they were only 180,000 words:‘and, though we now favour short volumes, it may be felt that, even with an index,this is too little for a volume’. Of the 21 articles for the proposed L–W volume,three were unwritten and the rest would need a good deal of work: ‘the fact is thatthe 44 articles together would make a volume of very suitable size’.84

This latter finding was endorsed at the first meeting of the sub-committeecalled for 20 October 1958, which decided that Central Office would need to takeresponsibility for the completion of the project in a single volume. Some of theB–K parishes were ‘not yet of an acceptable quality and will need considerablerevision’, and the calculations about L–W suggested that it was too short to be asingle volume. To fund this work the Central Office proposed to claim the unspent£750 from Leicestershire to put towards completion of the work.85

This, inevitably, opened up the old debate about where the money should bespent, and when Pugh wrote to Lee on 28 October 1958 to tell him the sub-committee’s decision Lee responded on 29 October negatively:

I cannot envisage the local committee agreeing to pay over any balance of moneyto the IHR. At least, when I put out feelers to discover what opinion on the subjectwas last May–June time, both Parker and Wells were against the idea. Would theestablishment of a local fund which you are authorised to spend be acceptable?...The only thing that worries me is the local attitude that ‘nothing shall go toLondon’. You must confess that this was one of the main reasons for appointingme in 1957.

Pugh now had to defend this position at a meeting of the VCH LeicestershireCommittee called in Leicester on 10 November 1958, which would consider the

83 VCH, Committee Minutes, 1958–62.84 VCH, Pugh memo, 13 Oct 1958.85 VCH, Professor J. G. Edwards to Sir Robert Martin, 23 Oct 1958.

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terms of Professor Edwards’s letter, pre-circulated to members. Neither Hoskinsnor Colin Ellis could attend, but both made their views known to Parker in nouncertain terms. Hoskins wrote to Parker from All Souls on 7 November incharacteristically combative terms:

In the first place I do not really care for the setting-up of a Sub-Committee inLondon on the Victoria History of Gartree (as Prof. Edwards calls it) without,apparently, any representative from Leicestershire being present or being able toexpress any contentious views on this contentious question. However, this Sub-Committee has not only been set up but has apparently made up its mind withoutthe slightest reference to us in Leicestershire as to the best course of action to betaken. This seems to me an extension of the odious principle that ‘the gentleman inWhitehall knows best’ – a principle which I heartily oppose and shall alwaysoppose. I do not care for London bureaucracies of any kind.

As to the Sub-Committee’s conclusions about the inadequate length of theGartree volumes, if separated into two parts, this is precisely what Prof. Simmonsand I (and possibly others on our General Committee) said from the beginning.This division into two miserably thin volumes was entirely Pugh’s idea from thestart, and we opposed it as long as we were able. But since matters of publicationdid not come within the province of the Local Committee, we were obliged to giveway.

My main point, however, is that I am wholly against the handing-over of theGartree material, and even more so the money from local sources to the CentralCommittee in London. There is no firm guarantee, to put it bluntly, that theGartree material will not moulder for years in the basement of the Institute ofHistorical Research, like so much other material gathered over the past decades.Prof. Edwards’s letter makes no promises about when the Gartree material will bepublished, only that ‘the central editorial staff will proceed with this workforthwith, as far as the general needs of the History allow’ (my italics). I do notregard this as at all a satisfactory guarantee of early publication, especially in thelight of our experience of the central editorial policy during the years we have beenworking on the Leicestershire history.

The matter is an even more fundamental one than this. I am convinced andhave always been convinced, that one simply cannot write English local historysitting on one’s backside in a London office or a London library. I have seenexamples of this kind of ‘local history’ and they give themselves away at a glance.I should hate to think that we had had any of our Leicestershire local historymanufactured in the Metropolis by people who had never seen the county andwho think that all history is to be found in documents.

I would like to see the Gartree material kept in Leicestershire (possibly in theCounty Record Office) until such time as it is thought feasible to initiate atopographical survey of our own, parish by parish, possibly under the aegis of thenew University of Leicester. There is a precedent for publishing outside theVictoria County History; the magnificent History of Northumberland is a witnessof this.

Ellis was equally adamant, telling Sir Robert Martin on 6 November 1958:

I am obliged to say that in my opinion the procedure they propose appears quiteunacceptable.... Their proposals seem to be that we should hand over to them£750 and all the work which has already been done, and for which we have paidthe local editor, in return for a vague understanding that they would complete theGartree volume as and when it might be convenient for them to do so. I am afraidthat all our material would leave Leicestershire and be deposited in their archivesfor an indefinite time.


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Ellis proposed instead that the notes be retained ‘in local custody where they willbe available to students, and that we shall explore the possibility of publishing thematerial ourselves and, of course, reimbursing ourselves to any extent possible bythe sale of our publications’.86

The minutes of the 10 November meeting record that there was ‘considerablediscussion’ as to the time it would take for the VCH Central Office to complete thevolume. Pugh expressed the view that ‘in view of the other commitments of hisoffice, it may be possible to send Gartree to press within four years’. Thecommittee expressed ‘the strong hope that the volume may be completed in ashorter time than this’.87 The following day Sir Robert Martin wrote to ProfessorEdwards:

Mr Pugh seemed unable to commit himself to any firm estimate of how long thework was likely to take, and I must emphasize that this point was of cardinalimportance in the Committee’s decision. They were quite unable to contemplateany such period as four years with any acquiescence, and I hope that they may beable to have some assurance that the work will be tracked and brought to aconclusion in a very much shorter time than that…. Two of those who wereunable to be there, Professor Simmons and Mr C.D.B. Ellis, had written urgingvery strongly that the work should be completed locally, in order that the GartreeVolume should appear in a reasonably short time.

The letter makes no mention of any funding going to London and the minutesrecord only that the offer from London to complete the parish histories should beaccepted, and that an approach should be made to the city and county councils tomaintain their grants to the VCH.88

Edwards responded to Martin on 18 November 1958 to say that he was notsurprised Pugh was non-committal given that they did not know what, if any,work Lee would be able to do, there was a good deal to do in terms of revising andin some cases updating articles, and ‘Pugh has not yet had an opportunity ofjudging the amount of work that these revisions will involve’. He was glad to hearthat the committee had decided to recommend that the county and city councilsshould implement their suspended grants since funding coming from Leicesterwould accelerate publication, but the volume would appear at some point even ifthe money was not forthcoming. In the wake of these discussions the countycouncil agreed to maintain its full grant for 1958–9 in order to complete theGartree work, but the city had pulled out after agreeing to meet half the debtoutstanding when Lee left at the end of September 1958.89

The Leicestershire Committee did not meet again until 20 November 1961when it accepted the resignations of Hoskins, Simmons and Ellis. Pugh, whoattended, pre-circulated a report to the effect that volume V would contain42 articles. A–K were completed, and for L–Z ten parishes needed to be revisedand in some cases parish records consulted, 12 needed architectural details

86 ROLLR DE 4330, Ellis to Martin, 6 Nov 1958.87 VCH, Committee Minutes, 1958–62, meeting 10 Nov 1958.88 Ibid.89 ROLLR DE 3220/35, Parker to ?, 13 Mar 1959.

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incorporating, and about ten minor queries needed resolution. He hoped thevolume would be ready by the end of the year. Pugh’s assurances were accepted,and the committee resolved only to meet again when the book was completed.Lee, meantime, continued to revise parish entries funded from the remainingmoney which was held by Dr Parker.

The final meeting of the committee took place on 23 November 1964, when itwas recorded that all the funds had been spent, less £41 14s 11d which remainedin hand. Pugh told the committee that with the publication of volume V, a furtherfive volumes would be needed to complete the county’s Hundreds. He added thatthe IHR would prefer Leicestershire to follow the pattern established elsewhereand have the project funded by the county council to the tune of £4,000–£5,000 ayear for up to 20 years. But he also noted that ‘as the recruitment of qualified andexperienced staff for the work is a very serious problem an immediate resumptionof work on Leicestershire could not be contemplated’. The committee resolvedthat the project should continue and that the county council should be approachedto undertake the necessary funding until the completion of the project.90 Thecommittee did not meet again, and if anyone approached the county council, theoutcome is unknown.

By the end of 1962 volume V was more or less ready for the press. McKinleywas consulted about the contents page, Janet Martin helped to read the proofs,and Hoskins declined to be mentioned, telling Pugh in March 1962 that:

As regards Gartree Hundred, I am delighted of course to hear that things are so faradvanced, and that we may expect the volume in the reasonably near future. Idon’t think I need see my piece on Great Stretton again, as I have lost my intimateknowledge of Leicestershire and have no access to local sources; so that I could donothing effectively with it. To the best of my ability and knowledge, the piece onGreat Stretton was accurate at the time I wrote it, and I certainly could notimprove on it at this distance. I don’t think you need explain that that smallcontribution to the volume is mine. It is hardly worth mentioning.91

When VCH Leicestershire V finally appeared in 1964 it did so with hardly anysign of Hoskins’s influence. The topographical studies of Gaulby and Frisby andGreat Stretton, and of Market Harborough, were all attributed to the assistanteditors. The volume editorial ascription was J. M. Lee and R. A. McKinley. Eightparish histories were attributed to McKinley, 11 to Lee and 23 to Janet Martin. DrKeith Allison, then senior assistant in the VCH Central office, had undertakenmuch of the editorial work required in London.92 Publication was accompanied bya celebratory meeting of the Leicestershire Archaeological Society at whichMichael Lee pointed to some of the highlights of the volume. He noted the oddityof starting the Leicestershire topographical volumes with an area which was solightly populated, but added that it showed ‘that places themselves have a historywhatever their present population’.93

90 VCH, Leicestershire file 1960–4: Gen Committee Minutes, 23 Nov 1964.91 VCH, Hoskins to Pugh (from 3 St Leonard’s Road, Exeter), 19 March 1962.92 VCH Leicestershire V (1964), xv.93 J. M. Lee, ‘The Gartree Hundred’, copy in the VCH archives.


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The project survived for another decade. The VCH Leicestershire committeemet for what turned out to be its final meeting on 23 November 1964, when itagreed that if the other five volumes were to be completed it would be necessaryfor the county council to take over financial responsibility for the project. Thisproposal was then referred to the County Records Committee, whichrecommended to the County Council at its meeting on 24 February 1965 that noaction should be taken. Perhaps surprisingly, the council did not accept this, andpassed the matter back to the Records Committee for further consideration. In1967 the Records Committee appointed an ad hoc committee to look further intothe possibilities of additional work. To quote Dr L. A. Parker’s 1973 account ofwhat happened next:

A deep cleavage of opinion arose as to whether or not an alternative plan shouldreplace the traditional Victoria County History and no conclusions were arrived atand since then no further action has been taken. Technically I suppose the GeneralCommittee of the VCH is awaiting an answer from the County Council to itsrequest made in 1964. However, the General Committee has lost all its members(save C.C. representatives last appointed in 1970) either by resignation, death andnon-appointment of representatives by the City of Leicester.94

The inertia which set in is perhaps not surprising, but an outstanding sum of £50was repaid to the county council in 1970 in order to close down the financial sideof the work,95 and yet the county council continued to appoint representatives tosit on the non-meeting ‘VCH History of Leicester Central Committee’. It was onlyin January 1974 that the county council approved a recommendation that sincethe committee had not met for ten years appointing representatives made littlesense, although even now there was reluctance to take the final step:

In view of the dormant state of the Committee there seems little point in thisCommittee appointing representatives to it…. The Committee is, therefore,recommended to take no action on the appointment of representatives to theGeneral Committee… and that the Director Designate of Museums and ArtGalleries be requested to look into the need to reopen the question of the VictoriaCounty History.96

Whether or not the Director Designate did make any such investigations, thecommittee did not meet again.

To conclude, in the late 1940s, and in conjunction with, although notdependent on, the setting up of the Department of English Local History, W. G.Hoskins put together a consortium including the University College, the countyand city councils, and a number of other groups including the Literary andPhilosophical Society, to fund the revival of the VCH in the county. Since thepublication of the first general volume in 1907 no further work had been done,although the VCH files turned out to contain a good deal of unpublished materialthat was transferred to Leicester for the project, and then revised. Hoskins wasappointed local editor, inevitably, and threw his energy into completing the

94 ROLLR DE 3072/159, Parker to Mr P. Barratt, 2 Jan 1973.95 VCH R73, Parker to Pugh, 11 Dec 1970, Pugh to Parker, 15 Dec 1970.96 ROLLR DE 3072/159, G. R. Lang, County Secretary, report to Council, 7 Jan 1974.

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general volumes (II and III), the first ever single volume VCH account of a town(IV) and the first of six planned topographical volumes (V – Gartree). It was animpressive record but it ran up against all the usual problems: authors who eitherfailed altogether to produce – hence the absence of a chapter in volume IV onRoman Leicester – or had to be encouraged and still went way over deadlines andword lengths; funding which ran out because production was not fast enough;and the perils of working with local authorities who were only ever able to commiton five-year time periods for a project that needed at least another 20 years tocomplete when it finally closed in 1964.

Through the whole story runs Hoskins’s relentless energy in which authorswere hassled, and the VCH Central Office was regularly asked to undertake piecesof work which could not otherwise have been done. Hoskins produced –eventually – but quite what would have happened in Leicestershire had he notdeparted for Oxford in 1952 we cannot know. By the time he returned to theDepartment of English Local History in 1966, volumes II, III, IV and V had beenpublished, and the project had run out of money. More crucially, he had growncynical about the VCH Central Office’s handling of the project, the timeeverything took, the reluctance to accept deadlines. For his part, Pugh foundHoskins and the project more generally after 1953 problematic. In 1977 he evenwrote a long memorandum setting out his own recall of events, which he insertedinto the VCH Leicestershire files in the IHR before he retired. He found Hoskinsawkward, and the end result was the breakdown of relations between theLeicestershire committee and the Institute of Historical Research. It was a sad endto an ambitious project, but the recent revival of work suggests that the missingHundred volumes are now firmly back on the local research agenda.


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